William Harris

This man deserves a longer article, but I couldn’t resist this clipping
from the London Standard, via the Montreal Gazette,
3 May 1912.

THE SAUSAGE KING.

Mr William Harris, who has been
known during the last 25 years as “The
Sausage King,” died yesterday at his
establishment at the corner of St John
street, Smithfield, E.C. He had been
confined to his bed for only three days,
and death was due to heart failure
caused by bronchitis.

Mr Harris, who was 69 years of age,
worked a butcher’s round in Woolwich
and Greenwich as a boy, and he started
his career in the sausage business
with a stall in Old Newgate Market.
About forty years ago he took the
ship at St John street, and he has
lived in the flat above ever since. By
dint of hard work, and, more particularly,
clever advertising, he built
up a new business, and was one of the
most famous caterers in Victorian
London. At one time he had forty
shops in various parts of London, and
others in Southend, Brighton, Portsmouth,
and other centres. As the
leases of the shops expired, however,
he gave them up and devoted his energies
entirely to the wholesale sausage
trade, supplying the army and
navy and large firms. There are now
only about half a dozen of his shops
in London.

The “Sausage King” was somewhat
eccentric, but this was to a large extent
due to his love of “personal advertising,”
which was his motto for
business success. At all times of the
day he wore a sort of evening dress,
with an opera hat, and a blazing diamond
in his white shirt, even when
buying in the market, and he used not
a scrap of writing or wrapping paper
that did not bear his photograph. His
trade mark, which he registered about
forty years ago, depicts him winning
the “Pork Sausage Derby” on a fat
porker. His principal catch-phrase
was “Harris’s sausages are the best,”
and it spread the fame of his sausages
all over the world. He also composed
a lot of poetic advertisements, which
caused much amusement.

At first Mr Harris used to sell his
sausages to the butchers who had
stalls in the market, and he was noted
for his eccentricity even then. He was
anxious to know whether the customers
preferred the sausages containing
chopped sage or those without it.
He was seen, as he sold each sort of
sausage, putting a pea into one or
other of his coat pockets in order to
record their respective popularity.

Another of his eccentricities was to
name each of his three sons William
and his four daughters Elizabeth.
To this day his three sons are known
as “Number One,” “Number Two,”
and “Number Three.” In 1887 he was
summoned for not sending “his son
William” to school. He promptly
brought all three before the magistrate
and asked which one was meant.
The School Board officer was puzzled,
but it transpired that it was the eldest
whose education was being neglected.
The father explained that he was
teaching his sons the business, and he
thought that it would be of more use
to them than going to school. He was
fined 2s. 6d., but he reckoned that the
advertisement he obtained was worth
quite £20,000. That this figure was not
over-estimated may be judged from
the fact that columns were devoted to
the case, and he was caricatured in all
the humorous papers.

Every Christmas Mr Harris sent a
gift of 1 lb. of sausages to each policeman
and fireman in the City of London
and in all other districts where he
had a shop. About 15 years ago, when
sun-bonnets for horses were first introduced,
the “Sausage King” drove
a mule from Folkestone to London
with a parasol fixed over the animal’s
head. All the brown and white Shetland
ponies which drew his red advertisement
carts around the streets
of London two years ago were bred by
himself in his own stables in the city.

The Harris family in the 1901 Census. Fancy going
through life being called “No. 2”!

Pearce edited a short-lived newspaper for Harris, called
Marrow Bones and Cleavers.